SILVERLAND. CHAPTER I. ON a certain afternoon in last October, we drove seawards over the Cornish uplands. It was the seventh day of the week, and over all things there brooded a very Sabbath calm; we were out of earshot of the stream-ripples in the dell; even the leaves were silent in the covert-belt where we sprung the first woodcock of the season yester-even; there was never a wave or rustle in the ferns and grasses fringing the high field-banks; and the air was still as a dream. Ere long, the silence was troubled with a sound, vague and faint from distance at first, but waxing in volume and distinctness, till it might be likened to the beat of a mighty drum, heavily muffledsuch an one as used to be smitten long ago in the B |